Meet Claudia Karafotas of Sal del Mar Gourmet

Today we’d like to introduce you to Claudia Karafotas.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I am the owner of Sal del Mar gourmet sea salt and I love the pursuit of creativity. My last paid job was the editor of a regional home and garden magazine, “Tucson Lifestyle Home and Garden.” What I loved most about my job was the “hunt,” finding a house or garden to feature in the magazine that had a special essence about it. It was never about how much the house cost, but rather about the design that created a special space.

After I left my job, I got married and moved to Mexico. Actually, I had moved to Paradise… and the sun and sand of San Carlos on the Sea of Cortez. I loved my new lifestyle, but it wasn’t long before my creative spirit began to surface again.

It is hard to know how an idea comes about, but I think that the concept for my company, Sal del Mar gourmet sea salt, was two ideas that seem totally unrelated but for me seemed so natural to come together: sea salt and hand-embroidered bags. I discovered the sea salt first and that is best explained by the fact that I am a ” foodie” even though I am an awful cook. But I love the process of choosing a menu, shopping for the ingredients and then spending time preparing a meal with my husband, who is a great cook.

We discovered that to cook in Mexico, at least where we were living at the time, you need to give up the idea of finding the ingredients that you are used to cooking within the States. Everything was different. No shopping in markets with long aisles of salad oils, vinegars, canned tomatoes, or even ordinary spices to choose from. The salt we bought wasn’t packaged in a familiar, round, blue box with a spout to pour from, but in a plastic bags. It was surprising to find the salt much coarser and moister than we were used to having. We loved it immediately. It had an intense, rustic flavor that was crisp, but not sharp and what we really liked was how it enhanced the flavor of our food without disguising the fundamental flavors. It also only took a pinch or two to season a dish.

I wanted to know everything about the salt and so began an adventure to traveling further south in Mexico and seeing for myself where the salt was “made.” The first thing I learned was how it was harvested. I was fascinated to see the process. Based on ancestral traditions, using controlled salt ponds, the Sea of Cortez is allowed to flood huge, flat, shallow beds, and then a dam is used to trap the water. The water then naturally evaporates as it is dried by the sun, leaving a layer of salt that is then harvested by hand.

And so, Sal del Mar gourmet sea salt was about to be born, but it took another important ingredient and the most important to me.   I was introduced to the women of Sabanito, a small village about 20 miles from Alamos, Sonora and a world away from San Carlos. On my first visit, I saw that embroidery was a natural art form for the women there. More often than not, after taking care of their children, cooking and cleaning, they would sit with their hoops and needles and embroider flowers and fanciful creatures. Their work was breathtakingly beautiful; and, it was then that “a light bulb went off in my head.” I realized I could have the salt I love “packaged” in hand-embroidered bags. I saw that by forming a partnership with the embroiderers they could stay in the role of the housewife and care for their children, but still be able to earn money to support their families by embroidering the bags to package the salt.

Thus, the partnership with the village women began. The women embroiders have become the heartbeat of Sal del Mar. We work together as a team. I buy the fabric and embroidery yarn and they cut, sew and embroider the whimsical designs for Sal del Mar’s gourmet sea salt bags and our new addition, hand-embroidered towels.

We meet to keep each other informed about our work. I do the marketing on the internet and report to them in my basic Spanish on the sales we have made. I love showing them a map of the United States and pointing out the places from Massachusetts to Oregon where we have shipped orders.

It’s been a partnership of over ten years. Our meetings throughout the years have brought us very close. We are more than business partners. I have gotten to know their children who come to the meetings with their mothers. Many of them are now going to high school and it is thrilling to watch them learn at their small village school and recently through the internet.

I love working with the embroiderers and they constantly surprise me with their artistic talent. I show them a design for a bag or towel and the create a piece of art. The bags are made of natural muslin and the towels are made of linen.

The designs are of waves, palm trees, mermaids (some with Santa hats), seashells and various other sea creatures. Each bag and towel is different as they add their personal artistic embellishments, giving each bag and towel its own charm. They reward me with the pride I see in their faces for their work and knowing they are earning money to help support their families while staying home to take care of their children.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Like any business, there are challenges for Sal del Mar, but because we are a company whose goal is to benefit the women embroiderers and not personal profit, our challenges are mostly related to production procedures. .To tell about them, I first need to describe the setting of the small village of Sabanito where our embroidery partners live.

The village is surrounded by a tropical deciduous forest with a scenic backdrop of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range. But while the setting is beautiful, the village of one hundred people is largely supported by sustainable agriculture. The men of the village work for other ranches and the work is not stable since it is dependent on so many variables. The women have no opportunity to work as it is too far from the next village where they might find work. The poverty level is high.

Although Sabanito is located just 20 miles from where I live in Alamos, Sonora Mexico, the dirt road is so treacherous with its rut holes and uneven terrain that it takes over an hour to get there. In the raining season, it is virtually non-passable because the dirt road turns into a river in places and other parts are like driving in snow when the powdery earth turns slick.

Our biggest challenge is how we accomplish getting orders and materials to Sabanito and then pick up the finished product. We don’t depend on communicating by phone as there is only one in the village. To solve this production problem, we have developed a very haphazard network of local friends and family. Sometimes we depend on our friend, Gaby, who works during the week in Sabanito, to deliver or pick up orders; or we sometimes do a “drop” at Meche’s (one of our embroiderers) aunt’s house and then one of few men who own a truck and happen to be going to or from Alamos, will pick up and deliver to the embroiderers..

Although it is an unconventional way to run a business, it all works. The key is to look at it as an adventure and marvel at how people will come together for each other.

Please tell us about Sal del Mar Gourmet.
Our company, Sal del Mar makes hand-embroidered bags of gourmet sea salt and hand-embroidered linen hand and bar towels. Each bag or towel is a work of art. Their designs marry the tradition of the whimsy of Mexico’s embroidery art with a twist of modern aesthetics. They bring joy and happiness just by looking at them. Each item is one of a kind with the artists’ personal embellishment …giving each its own special charm.

We believe that the beauty of “the imperfect” of our hand-embroidered Sal del Mar bags of gourmet sea salt and linen towel makes the perfect gift. We have sold them as hostess gifts, birthday gifts, a gift for the gourmet, a father’s day gift, a teacher’s gift, a house-warming gift, and wedding party gifts.

We want to brag too that our gourmet sea salt is sun-dried and hand-harvested from the Sea of Cortez. It is ideal for sprinkling on fresh vegetables, for use in cooking and even for salting a margarita glass.

We market our Sal del Mar gourmet sea salt and linen hand towels on our website: www.saldelmar.com and about a hundred gift boutiques across the United States sell them.

We are so proud that we have a partnership with the women embroiders and that they can stay at home with their children while earning money for their families from the sale of Sal del Mar products.  It is our underlying belief at Sal del Mar that helping each other helps make a better world.

How would you describe the type of kid you were growing up?
I have always been involved in some way with design and creating a product. Even growing up, I would invent ways to make something look better or to work better.

I especially liked having a party with a theme so that I could design .not only the invitations and decorations, but even costumes for the guests to wear and the type of food served that was in keeping with the theme. And I was lucky enough to have parents that let me do it.

My interests were horseback riding with my dad and sister where we lived out in the countryside of Kansas.

I also loved gardens and growing vegetables and flowers which is still a favorite pastime of mine.

My dream as a young girl was to become an architect and years after receiving my undergraduate degree, I achieved something like that by getting a Masters degree in Landscape Architecture.

Pricing:

• Saldel Mar hand-embroidered bags of gourmet sea salt: $14 each, plus postage
• Sal del Mar hand-embroidered linen hand and bar towels: $28 each, plus postage

Contact Info:

• Website: www.saldelmar.com
• Phone: 520 990 6445
• Email: claudia@saldelmar.com or annie@saldelmar.com
• Instagram: saldelmar

            Image Credit:
Amy Haskell, haskellphotog@gmail.com, Hal Wambach

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